


Hard to Control When it Begins

by fuckener



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt enlists in Sam's help to get back at Blaine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard to Control When it Begins

Kurt doesn’t have a boyfriend by the start of April. 

The break-up isn’t too dramatic when he retells it to Rachel - and he thinks that maybe things like that are the reasons to blame for it happening at all. He thinks when his boyfriend holds his hands and says the word _friends_ in a soft, practiced voice - like it’s that simple to undo them and erase a whole year from Kurt’s life - he thinks he should react beyond a hesitant nod, but in that moment, he can’t think of any convincing arguments to give if Blaine doesn’t want him anymore. Not when he took enough convincing the first time around.

Kurt tells Rachel first, which is a mistake, because Rachel loves Blaine. He should have told Mercedes, who’s neutral on Blaine, or better yet, Santana. He’s sure Santana would have some comforting words of repulsion at everything Blaine does to offer him right now. Rachel just gives him a look of disbelief and then an awkward pep-talk about how love is worth fighting for that ends in her squeezing his hands too tightly and grinning at him with her awful, terrible optimism.

“You can’t just give up,” Rachel tells him after a moment’s silence, her smile fading. They’re close, now, close enough for Kurt to sometimes forget she doesn’t always know how to say the right thing. She realizes her mistake when she looks at Kurt’s face, her grip turning slack on his fingers and face contorting into a melodramatic state of sympathy. He wishes he hadn’t told her - she wouldn’t be looking at him like that, and maybe he’d feel a little less like this.

Kurt doesn’t know how to say things like ‘I’m tired of not feeling wanted,’ but he thinks she might understand that he does anyway, even just a little. She shifts closer to him on the bed, his arm squeezed tightly in one of hers, and starts talking about the lovely guys in New York who will adore the lovely guy that he is, using her free hand to map out the faces and bodies of boys that are so far away now that hearing about them makes him start to cry.

It takes another moment before her voice sharply cuts off and then she’s suddenly holding him, the awkward, achingly tight way she does, like she’s trying to distract him from his emotional pain by causing him as much of the physical kind as she can instead - and it’s so Rachel that it kind of works for a moment, makes him laugh in a bubbling, strange way before he buries his face into her hair and cries again. He feels lonely, in a way he thinks by now he should be used to, or at least have prepared himself to get used to for a while longer.

Sitting there in silence and wrapped up in Rachel’s suffocating embrace helps, kind of. It’s a safe place to cry, a safe person to cry in front of until the floorboards outside his bedroom door give a warning creak and the door opens wide so the whole world can see him, stupid and heartbroken over some boy he’s only friends with.

In an instant, he pulls himself away from Rachel, quickly dabbing his burning eyes with his fingertips and willing himself to calm down; he’s been holding tears in for an entire day now, and now they’ve started they just won’t stop. When he glances at Finn and Sam in the doorway, he knows his eyes are too red and shiny, that his cheeks are flushed and wet with tears and that his attempt at smiling fails terribly, but he tries his best not to look as weak as they’ll think this makes him, even though he can’t bring himself to look at them for very long.

Picturing the look of dumbstruck concern on Finn’s face is easy enough, though. “We were gonna ask if you guys - are you guys -” Kurt stares intently at his dresser, thinks of kneeling by it a year ago while he folded his Dalton issued trousers and cheerfully hummed one half of a quiet duet. Finn clears his throat. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Rachel answers, quickly, and Kurt is thankful because he doesn’t want to talk to them, doesn’t want to tell another person with his shaky voice and bruising heart just why he’s spending his much anticipated Friday night sleepover with Rachel sobbing into her neck. “We’re taking the slumber party to my house for the night.” She shoos them, tells them primly, “Go, give us some privacy to pack.”

Finn stares at them both, brow furrowed, and Sam has to take it upon himself to shut the door again and from what they can hear, drag Finn back down the stairs while they argue in loud whispers.

They’re close enough for Rachel to know Kurt doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to deal with his family, doesn’t really want to do much for the night. She lifts herself off the bed and holds her hand out to him with an appropriately small smile, saying, “You know, your house isn't really equipped for this - situation.”

“Too many boys,” Kurt agrees, half-smiling. He sighs a little, wiping his eyes again before he takes her hand, tightly, and she shoots him the most obnoxiously encouraging grin in return that actually does kind of help.

-

Kurt spends the weekend mostly feeling miserable and being cooed over by the girls - except for Santana, who randomly appears on his doorstep, grinning and holding her hand out for a high-five that he has to give to her otherwise he doubts she’ll leave.

Having them around is nice, if only because they’re an efficient barrier between he and everyone else in his house, and because they know how to distract him from Blaine. Quinn talks to him about the future and Rachel shows him some planning sketches of how they’re going to combine their furniture into their first apartment - apparently unsuccessfully and heinously - and even though Blaine texts him once or twice and his family gives him some long looks over the dinner table, he’s surprisingly okay.

He doesn’t say that when Blaine and Sam send him matching texts on Sunday morning: _are you feeling better?_ He stares at both messages for a while, feeling sore again and tapping random keys, then he decides not to say anything - nothing looks right, feels right, and when he looks at Blaine’s picture on his phone too long he feels like bursting into tears or throwing it at the wall, neither of which help anybody. 

Finn stumbles into his room later, after Tina drops off a box of albums labelled in her cheery, loopy handwriting, _independent ladies!! music_ that she tells him has come in handy for her before and now sits shoved under his bed and hidden by the sheets. 

Obviously, Finn knows now. Kurt’s been dreading this awkward talk all weekend but his bedroom is doing this awful thing where it starts to feel suffocatingly lonely when all the girls have gone, and a few more photographs of someone have been picked off his wall by Mercedes and disappeared along with them too. At least Finn is big enough to fill it out a little, shuffling anxiously inside and dropping onto the bed next to Kurt, looking anywhere except at him.

After a moment, he gingerly touches Kurt’s hand, staring down at it and making his most intensely confused face, the one he only makes whenever he doesn’t know what to do at all.

“You’re like,” he starts, then his face screws up. “Great. Really great.”

It’s mostly reflex when Kurt replies, “I am”: all the crying has made him feel gross and stupid and this kind of pathetic he never thought he’d be. But, as Rachel’s hourly messages punctually remind him, he’s great (and then she’d add a smiley-face, or a kiss, or a lyric from some song they both love - something that he’d roll his eyes at but still like seeing there).

Finn squeezes his shoulder. “And I love you and all, dude, but you gotta leave this room eventually, ‘cause you’re just bumming yourself out in here alone thinking about this stuff. And no guy - nobody’s worth you feeling like I know you are.” He pulls Kurt into a one armed hug, tightly and just as awkwardly as Kurt had anticipated.

Kurt assumes Rachel’s put him up to this, or that his dad’s started to get suspicious enough about why he’s spent all weekend in his room being visited by girls clutching boxes of cookies and armfuls of bad movies to ask Finn to check up on him. But Finn gives him this look, with his forehead worried and teeth dug deep into his bottom lip, pulling Kurt firm enough against him to hurt a bit, and Kurt knows it’s all him, and that he can’t tell him no.

“What do you have in mind?” he asks. He nudges Finn’s chest with his shoulder, his lips twitching into a smile.

Finn breaks into a grin and suggests watching ‘that movie Kurt likes with that chick’, which they somehow manage to narrow that down to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Unsurprisingly, he passes out half-way through, draped half across Kurt and half across the living room couch, and doesn’t wake up when Kurt cries at the ending harder and longer and feeling more heartbroken than he should be.

-

By the time Sam shows up, Finn’s still asleep on the couch, their parents are still out having their weekly date night and Kurt’s trying to distract himself with making dinner. Sam comes in with his bag hauled over his shoulder, wearing his dad’s jacket over fleecy pyjamas like always, because for some reason nobody’s ever bothered to question Sam likes to take the four hour drive from Kentucky to Ohio in dorky pairs of pyjamas and bear-feet slippers.

It’s weirdly endearing, in a Sam Evans way. It makes Kurt say hello through a smile.

“Hey.” Sam grins at him and shrugs his coat off, setting it on the floor beside his bag. He rolls up his spaceship-printed sleeves and walks over to the pot of spaghetti sauce Kurt’s left to heat, picking up the spoon on the bench to stir it absentmindedly. He nods at where the sound of deep, mildly scary snoring is coming from. “What happened to Finn?”

Kurt knows there’s no use in telling Sam to go watch TV or play Finn’s Xbox, so he hands the pack of mince over to him to add to the pot instead. “We watched a movie about a girl who liked to be fully clothed.” 

After rooting around the cupboards to find it, he offers Carole’s tiny-pie-patterned apron out to Sam, and Sam leans down to let Kurt hang it around his head, stirring one-handed and smiling at him that odd, anxious way everybody’s been smiling at him this weekend. Kurt ties it at the back and Sam grins at him wide enough for his eyes to squeeze shut and nose to wrinkle, asks him through his teeth, “How’s it look?”

Kurt squints at him and fixes the frilly fabric bunched up at his chest, humming thoughtfully. “Surprisingly flattering.”

Snorting, Sam turns back to the sauce. It falls quiet until there’s only the sounds of himself chopping onions and Finn snoring loudly in the next room. It’s weirdly comforting after the awkward, crowded hell his friends put him through the last few days.

“I never liked him,” Sam says abruptly.

Kurt turns and blinks at him. Seeing the knife clutched in his hand, Sam starts to stumble over his words.

“Blaine, I mean.” He looks down into the sauce, holding the spoon and a tube of tomato puree in tense hands. “This isn’t meant to sound bad, I know you’re still, like... I just never liked him.” He looks at Kurt, lips pressed together. “He should have made you happier.”

Kurt stares at him for a second, then turns away again, sharply. Blaine transferred for him - got more solos than he did, the part in the school musical that he wanted, easily became co-leader of the glee club with Rachel. Part of him feels like arguing, like talking about their first kiss, dueting in his car, coffee-dates at the Lima Bean - but there isn’t much else to talk about. 

“Maybe,” he says after a while, his voice soft.

There’s another pause, and then he feels Sam’s hand tentatively resting on his back. “Sorry, I really shouldn’t’ve." Kurt feels his fingers twitch where they're spread between his shoulder blades. "I think you’re awesome, Kurt.”

He’s never been short with Sam. It’s difficult for anyone to do - he’s far too nice and well-intentioned for it - and it’s not just Sam that he’s frustrated with in all honesty, but he’s the only one around to snap at, even if Kurt can’t help smiling when he does it, albeit bitterly. “I’m tired of being pitied over this.”

Sam pats his back and reassures him, “I’m done now, promise. I know you don’t need it.”

-

School is a terrifying prospect.

He manages to evade Blaine all day until glee club, where there is no girl-shaped border between the two of them and he’s immediately cornered just outside the choir room, by the lockers. He holds his Biology folder tight against his chest and looks resolutely into Blaine’s eyes even though it hurts. 

“Are you okay?” Blaine asks, as though it isn’t obvious. He has his eyebrows furrowed like he’s concerned. His hand reaches out for Kurt and pauses in mid-air with his fingertips pointed out towards him, then drops back to his side. 

Kurt holds his own hand and tries not to look as heartbroken as he feels by it.

“Fine,” he says, quickly, squeezing his fingers tight. He can’t meet Blaine’s eyes. He can’t do anything except think of Blaine saying, _we’d be better as friends_ and leaving him no room for disagreement. No room for anything, really - as much as Blaine wants them to stay friends Kurt doesn’t think he can.

Boys flock to Blaine. Girls flock to Blaine. It won’t take long before he’s singing to some other boy, and Kurt doesn’t want to hear it. The sting of rejection, of being unwanted by the only person he’s ever been allowed to want is still leaving him reeling and breathless and so, _so_ sore.

But he tacks on a big smile he’s become an expert at forcing lately and it passes as being real enough.

Blaine nods, concern still in his eyes. “Okay,” he says, and he gives Kurt a smile that he knows well. The smile he got for trying to help Karofsky out the closet last year, for trying to get the solo back at Dalton, trying to be the lead in West Side Story, trying to be the senior class president. 

The smile he gets when he fails.

-

His dad takes them all out for dinner. He claims it’s spontaneous, despite choosing a sushi restaurant Kurt alone likes and that Burt once said was too expensive for its tiny portions. Apparently, he’s forgotten as much, shaking it off when Kurt brings it up and giving him a long, silent hug afterwards that really doesn’t make spontaneity sound any more credible.

“Sushi!” Finn says to Kurt on their way into the restaurant with a hearty thump aqainst his back and his obnoxiously big, unsubtle grin in Kurt’s face. Sam stands at the other side of him wearing a slightly diluted version of it.

Kurt let’s them both walk him inside, figuring it’ll make them feel better to try lightening his now perpetually awful mood by discussing how crap they are at using chopsticks to eat, and then genuinely feeling better during the meal when they’re both spearing sushi rolls that fall back onto their plates before making it to their mouths.

Sam takes time out of his Mr. Miyagi impression to elbow him and smile with a grain of rice at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t be smug.”

“I have the right,” he counters, taking another easy mouthful. He taps a finger against the side of his own mouth and Sam blinks, cleaning the rice away with the swipe of his tongue.

He prods at his food again, trying to successfully stab it into place one, two, three times before putting the chopsticks down, hopelessly. “I actually like sushi so this is kinda tragic.”

A passing waiter hands forks and knives out to them soon enough, and Kurt sits most of the meal half-disgusted by the way Finn talks with his mouth overflowing and half-contented just to be there with his family and Sam, neatly talking around all the miserable things clogging up his mind so well he forgets about them until the cheque comes, and two boys take the table at the other side of the room.

“Oh my god,” he breathes out, winded. He looks down at his feet, shrugging his coat on and keeping his back to the table Blaine and Sebastian are at, desperately hoping that they don’t see he and his family and that his family don’t see them.

That’s Sam’s cue to trail out of his conversation with his Finn and visibly tense. There’s a pause that feels long and unfairly terrifying before Sam tells Finn to tell his mom they’ll be out by the car and drags them both outside with him, walking fast and holding Kurt’s arm like it might tear, petal-thin, in a grip any stronger.

Kurt looks into the restaurant window at the two of them even though he wants nothing less than to see what they’re doing together. He already knows. All the possible ways it could be a misunderstanding slip in and out of his mind in a sharp moment that hits him like cold gale. The momentum makes him stumble a bit on his feet into Sam, who’s been talking to him for the past five minutes and who has a light hand spread across his back that feels like it’s keeping him upright.

He looks up at Sam, eyes pale and wide, and interrupts whatever he’s saying with a soft, “He moved on already.” Saying it makes him ache, feel all his bruised insides press together and throb in the pain.

Sam just stares at him, open-mouthed, big-eyed, with nothing to offer. His hand presses firmer against Kurt’s back.

For a moment, Kurt thinks he’s going to speak, but instead Finn asks him, “What’d you say?”

Kurt swallows, throat dry, and resolutely doesn’t tear up. He moves away from Sam and holds himself, leaning on the car for support he doesn’t want anyone to know he needs. 

“Nothing.” It sounds quiet. Resigned.

Finn gives them confused looks and questions until their parents join them, unlocking the car and letting the three of them try to fit into the backseat together, quieter than usual. Sam blocks him off from Finn in the middle seat, and Kurt spends the whole drive staring out of the window to avoid any talk about it - but he thinks of it the whole way, and of the sympathetic curve of Blaine’s mouth pressing against Sebastian’s cruel, thin smirk.

“Good food, right?” Burt asks the whole car, but Kurt sees his eyes in the mirror, fixed worriedly on him.

He nods and smiles, feeling so suddenly alone he can’t breathe. “Yeah. Great.”

-

At home, after shuffling out of the cramped backseat and telling his dad that he’s tired with a sullenness he thinks he’s more than earned, he closes his bedroom door behind him and lets out a breath heavy enough to feel like it scratches his throat.

The two of them are stuck at the forefront of his mind, pressing and tangling and dating. It’s been a week, Kurt thinks, and Blaine is dating. A part of him is frustrated with himself for not expecting it, preparing for it, and the rest of him is an ugly mix of wanting to burst into tears in Rachel’s arms and wanting to punch something so hard it can never repair, an urge he’s new to.

But he can’t tell Rachel. It’s humiliating just having Sam know - Sam, whose response to Kurt gossiping is to act like Jerry Springer and effectively distract them both from the actual subject. He wishes nobody knew, that he hadn’t looked up from the table and abruptly saw the two of them, smiling at each other. _Dating._

He cries a little because he can’t help it. He doesn’t check his phone because it’s been made clear in the past week that Blaine has no trouble messaging him all the same. He lies in bed for two hours, trying not to think while thinking far, far too much, and then hisses at himself before glancing at his phone, where a new message is lighting up the screen. 

His heart twists briefly in dread, but it’s Sam’s name he finds there.

_downstairs??_

Sighing, Kurt gets out of his bed and quietly makes his way down, peeking into the dark living room to find no-one, then into the kitchen, where Sam is at the dining table in his flannel pyjamas, hands out in front of him, fidgeting incessantly. He goes to stand at the sight of Kurt, but Kurt makes his way to the chair beside him, pulling his knees to his chest when he’s sat down on top of it.

It’s so quiet. Kurt can see the struggle in Sam’s head to find appropriate words to say across his face.

“What an asshole,” is apparently what he settles on. Kurt gives him a look, but Sam is staring at his own knotted hands, his brow furrowed. “What kind of - who does that?” He shakes his head, looking bemused by his own question, then his cheeks redden a little and he seems to remember he’s talking about the ex Kurt’s still kind of hung up on. 

Another silence follows. This time Sam says, lowly, “You could do way better, you know.”

At that, Kurt curls into himself further, breathing becoming shaky. He smiles, and knows it looks hard and empty across his face. “I couldn’t,” he says, quietly, and he hates how true it feels. It hurts to admit out loud. “The first guy - the first _person_ who actually wanted me ran off some terrible, psychotic asshole instead. And now to top off being dumped, everybody's going to look at me and see the - the one that nobody wants. Even him. It's so _humiliating_." Kurt takes a deep breath and holds himself so tightly his knees dig into his chest. "I wish he knew how horrible I felt tonight, seeing them."

It all seems to flood out and stay thick in the air around them, stay so heavy deep inside of Kurt that he wonders if it’ll ever go away. 

Sam doesn’t say anything and Kurt can’t look at him. He traces the stitching at the side of his pyjama bottoms with his fingertip.

“It was just nice." The room sounds so silent and empty around him that it seems to echo. He presses his lips together, continuing to try defending his own heartache, "It was nice to have someone.” After a pause, he adds in a softer voice, “To be wanted.”

He isn’t even sure that he _was_ anymore.

There's the sound of Sam's chair dragging loudly across the tiles, and then he’s at Kurt’s side, putting a hand over the one Kurt has on his knee. He squeezes it until Kurt looks up and sees the hard way Sam’s looking back at him. “Kurt, you - you’re better than he is. If people don’t see that it’s because _they_ suck, not you, and there’s...” His lips curve into a small smile, his hand tightening over Kurt’s. “There’s some guy in like, New York city or Tokyo or somewhere cool like that who’ll be perfect for you. Your Louis Lane. So don’t settle for small-town losers."

Sam smiles at him, genuinely, reassuringly, and so sweetly well-intentioned that Kurt has to smile back. It helps to hear, it helps to know the the people he tries to keep at a complete disconnect from his love-life (AKA, all of the straight boys he knows) still care enough about him to want to heal it this way.

But it isn't enough.

He keeps smiling, though: smiling and patting Sam’s hand as he gets up; smiling and telling him, “Goodnight"; then slipping back out of the room, back into his empty double bed in a room with half the photograph frames empty or facing the walls, his teeth dug deep into his bottom lip.

-

On Thursday, Blaine corners him again, after a few successful days of ducking behind the girls at the sight of him and sticking to Santana’s side in the hallways.

“Are you avoiding me?” Blaine asks him, holding the strap of his bag and giving him a wide-eyed stare, looking like he’s hurt by the thought. Like he’s hurt at all. 

It’s unfair, Kurt thinks, for Blaine to stop by his locker like this anymore. It’s the only territory in school that belongs to him, all traces of Blaine now cleaned away and their empty spaces painstakingly redecorated by Rachel (tacky magnets that spell out _NYADA!!_ , a picture of the two of them in New York last year, the marks of she and Mercedes’s lipstick-kisses and autographs on taped-up scraps of paper). 

He should be safe from this, here.

He fumbles with the textbooks inside, forgetting abruptly what he’s even doing there. In his head, _Blaine’s_ head is preoccupied with Sebastian but can still spare him a helping of patronizing ex-boyfriend pity that Kurt really does not want. He clears his throat, primly. “We should keep separate for a while,” he explains, voice thankfully steadier than he’d worried it would be.

Blaine’s eyes are heavy on him for a moment. Kurt stares intently at the star-sticker that covers up where their junior prom photo was and feels crushingly _sad_ again.

“Kurt, I don’t want us to stop being friends.” He steps a little nearer, looking around at the other students like he always did when he thought they were too close together. “Do you?”

He has the gall to sound worried about Kurt’s answer.

“No,” Kurt lies, and he reaches out to pick the star-sticker off the back of his locker, leaving it bare instead. He wraps his arms around himself and still, still can’t look Blaine in the eye. It all suddenly feels like such a devastating betrayal. “I don’t want to be around you right now.”

Blaine’s hands come up in front of him, defensively. “And I totally understand that, I do. I just don’t want it to stay like this.” The hallway has emptied out by now, enough for Blaine to reach out and give Kurt’s arm a cautious squeeze. “This is killing me, Kurt.”

Kurt’s head snaps around to face him and he gives him a sharp look - a mix of disbelief and abrupt, blinding anger. He opens his mouth, about to speak harsher words than he ever has to Blaine, when someone comes to his side and a warm hand slides into his own, making him turn in surprise, instead.

“Everything okay?” Sam asks, smiling.

It takes a moment for either of them to respond. Blaine’s too distracted by their locked hands and Kurt’s too distracted by the way Sam squeezes his, sways it a little between them. His brain has to catch up before he squeezes back, mimicking Sam’s falsely sweet smile.

“Yeah.” His throats a little too dry and the surprise leaves him a little breathless, but nobody seems to care much. 

Least of all Blaine, who continues aiming confused glances between them and pressing his lips into a line like he’s trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem. “Yeah,” he echoes, instead of asking the question Kurt can clearly see in his eyes. Blaine just keeps staring between them with wide eyes and squeezing tightly at the strap of his bag.

Good, Kurt thinks. Shutting his locker with his free hand, he suggests, brightly, “We should get a move on to glee practice.” 

He revels in the satisfaction of Blaine’s dumbfounded expression, tugging Sam an inch closer by the hand as they walk away and smiling his first real smile in days.

-

The satisfaction fades after spending glee practice with Sam’s chair rammed right up against his (thankfully, nobody seems to find it odd since more often than not in the past year they’ve sat beside each other during practice) and sharing a fast but enthusiastic high-five on the way out, after having Blaine stand, put his coat on and give them another long look.

Then Kurt is driving them home with Finn, having an internal panic over a five second lie they've dug themselves into that’s doubtlessly going to bring more depression and mood-swings than it does more momentary joy and lapses of judgement after it gets found out.

In the backseat, Sam is singing out the guitar solo on the radio while he messily airguitars along with it, screwing his face up in the effort of it all evidently not having the same problem. Kurt listens to he and Finn loudly imitating instruments the whole drive and ends up feeling weirdly better by the time they get home.

Sam stops him on the way in with a hand on his arm, looking almost worried. He waits until Finn’s inside the house before saying, lowly, “Sorry if I was out of line there. I overheard and it just...” He shakes his head. “It pissed me off.”

Surprised, Kurt raises an eyebrow at him, then shrugs, crossing his arms. “You’re not the only one.”

Sam’s lips twitch.

“It’s fine,” Kurt assures him. He pats Sam’s arm and feels a small smile spread across his face. “It felt good, actually, getting him back a little.”

This time Sam has a full, cheery grin in response. “It was kind of awesome,” he agrees. Then he laughs and says, “The look on his _face_.” 

He imitates it, more embellished and exaggerated and with the kind of odd ridiculousness Kurt only appreciates from him. Kurt snorts and pushes him towards the house, all of his panic gone - since the break-up so far has sucked on apocalyptic levels, why not enjoy some stupid little things in between shattering realisations?

-

On Friday morning, Rachel quickly makes her way to him, holding both his hands and solemnly letting him know she saw Blaine yesterday afternoon at the Lima Bean, and he wasn’t alone, and it didn’t look platonic (although she’d used the word ‘right’, looking outraged on his behalf). It isn’t a shock, but Kurt knows know he’ll be getting a lot of sympathetic talks like these and a lot more hushed stories about Blaine and his new boyfriend that he really doesn’t want to endure.

So he and Sam’s five second lie becomes ten seconds after Rachel tells him, too.

Sam keeps his arm draped across the back of Kurt’s chair all through glee practice, and imitates Blaine’s confused-now-turned-constipated expression from yesterday at him over their lunchtable. It’s not couple-y - it’s basically just Sam trying to cheer him up - but Kurt sees the way it makes Blaine shift in his seat, drawing them looks intended to be more inconspicuous than they are and frowning at Sam in a pissed off way Kurt’s only seen a handful of times.

It kind of thrills him, making Blaine as jealous and upset as he’s made Kurt feel, with every kiss with Rachel and every solo and every boy that falls over his feet for him.

Sam gives him a smile, like they’re sharing their own joke. Kurt doesn’t bother fretting for once, just smiles back and sometimes watches Blaine, watching them.

-

Blaine finds him again, apparently unable to grasp the idea of staying separate for a while and having something so important to say he has to bodily block the choir room door before Kurt leaves.

He’s frowning, jaw locked tight and eyebrows drawn, the way his face is when something doesn’t go the way he wants it too. 

“Are you and Sam...” He has a weird, sudden facial tick. “Together?”

Kurt straightens, trying to keep all signs of surprise and panic from his face. God, he does _not_ know what to say to that. He can either admit the truth and look stupid and pathetic and desperate for it, not to mention an embarrassing kind of crazy he’s only associated with Rachel until this point; or he can keep the lie going and watch jealousy flare up in Blaine’s eyes, dig an unknowing Sam deeper into his own personal mess just for the momentary joy of getting back at his ex.

It’s the faintly-covered bruise on Blaine’s neck that decides it for him.

Emotion swells in him at the sight of it, irrationally. He smiles a fake, mockingly sweet smile, head tilted a little to the side condescendingly. “You didn’t know?” 

The look on Blaine’s face, of surprise turned to obvious anger makes Kurt’s smile widen, meanly. Where does Blaine get the right to be mad over Kurt dating too quickly post-break-up?

He taps Blaine’s shoulder, gesturing his head to the side as a sign for him to move out of the way. “Maybe we can double-date with you and Sebastian one day,” he suggests, this time making no effort at all to hide the resentment in his voice, in his whole being.

Blaine moves aside, eyes fixed to the ground, and Kurt leaves on such an anger-fueled adrenaline he forgets what he actually said until Sam comes home from swim practice that night and pulls the exact same ridiculous face-convulsion Blaine made at him today when he asked if the two of them were dating.

-

Sam stays that night, too tired from practice to make the four hour drive home like he normally does. They spend most of the night at the living room coffee table playing cards because Finn found Puck’s set under his bed, and then Finn leaves, declaring he’ll make dinner this time to pay the two of them back. Kurt isn’t big on grilled cheese, but he is big on Finn helping around the house in any degree.

So Kurt and Sam play snap for ten minutes with Puck’s obscene pack of cards until Kurt’s ready to talk and feels like Finn is singing loudly enough with his iPod in the kitchen not to hear whatever’s said.

“Blaine spoke to me again today,” he says, lowly, watching Sam failingly attempt to shuffle the deck.

He stops to look at Kurt through his bangs, displeased by the sound of the name alone. “What’d he say?”

His voice already sounds angry, but Kurt guesses he’s under the impression Blaine’s got him upset over the break-up (again) and he’s preparing himself to tell Kurt that his ex-boyfriend is an asshole (again).

Kurt pauses, pressing his lips together and watching Sam deal out the cards between them. “He asked if we were dating,” he says, softly, and then Sam’s hand pauses. Without looking at him, Kurt forces himself to continue, “And I was stupid and told him that we were.”

A beat. He looks up, and Sam’s grinning. “I bet that drove him crazy.”

Despite his surprise, Kurt can’t help his lips twitching a little, too. “It did. He had a facial spasm just asking the question.”

Sam laughs, deals out the rest of the cards still wearing his big smile. “So, I’m your boyfriend now?” he asks. He raises what Kurt knows is trying to be a suggestively quirked eyebrow, and fails.

Apparently, Kurt forgot the only things Sam takes seriously are break-ups and TV show ratings.

“I don’t want to put that on you,” Kurt tells him, honestly. He doesn’t want to look like a pathetic, lying ex, either, but he thinks saying that basically is putting it on Sam, so he keeps it to himself.

Sam takes a moment to sit back on his hands and stare thoughtfully at his glass of water. Then he shrugs, sitting forward again and looking Kurt straight in the eye. “It’s not like I’ll be dating anyone soon. And I got you into this mess, I can’t just leave you in it alone.” 

Kurt hasn’t thought of it that way, but it’s true enough. His insides are still squirming, worried, and even if it’s all undeniably stupid, it means Blaine doesn’t think he’s won the break-up game they have. 

“We make a good duo, too,” Sam continues. He picks up his hand of cards, hiding his face with them when he says, “We’d be good at getting him back for, you know, his general assholery.”

Kurt snorts, picking up his cards and rolling his eyes. “I’m not making us a pair of matching spandex costumes for this, so don’t get your hopes up.”

-

Santana and Brittany take Kurt out on the weekend, dragging him to an end of Lima he’s never been in where everything seems decidedly gayer. They sit outside a cafe together, sipping drinks Kurt knows he’ll end up paying for, pointing out guys to Kurt and playing a blatant game of footsie under the table.

“My bad,” Santana tells him after her foot accidentally slides up his leg, again. She stops pointing at random guys and estimating their dick sizes to turn to Kurt instead, with a considering look. “I know neither of us are at hag status with the other, but I want to help you out, Kurt. Give you some wisdom, one gay to another.”

Brittany smiles blankly at her. “You’re so nice, San.”

Modestly, Santana waves her off, smiling. She leans in over the table. “So, I’m gonna be honest with you: if your taste in men doesn’t change from overcompensating midgets who somehow manage to have worse taste in clothes than the demon-spawn Berry will someday surrogate for you, you’re going to live a life filled with one depressing sexual encounter with a small penis after the other.” She puts a hand on her heart, then speaks as though her words should be leaving him in tears of appreciation. “I like you. I want the sex you have to be at least just below average.”

Kurt stares at her, unblinking, taking a long sip of his smoothie. It’s cold and gives him an immediate headache, but he needs something, anything else to do.

“So pick a guy from here,” Brittany chimes in, bumping their shoulders together. She stares past him in thought before adding, “He can’t wear hair-gel. Santana says if she sees any guy with hair-gel she’ll make his nuts into soup.”

At the other side of the table Santana raises her drink. “And I’ll make good on that promise, babe, just you wait.” She licks the juice off her lips, shrugging at Kurt. “So, what do you say?”

He fumbles with his hands, hesitating for a moment. Fake dating Sam means other people would find out that aren’t Blaine, he realises. But he doesn’t know if it’s fair to broadcast it unnecessarily, even if discussing dating anyone with Santana is this much of a harrowingly awkward process.

She rolls her eyes impatiently. “Look, I can promise at least eight inches, and if that’s not -”

“I’m seeing someone, actually,” Kurt quickly interrupts, his voice about three octaves too high and his face feeling doused in gasoline and hit by a match. 

Brittany has trailed out of the conversation entirely by this point, instead choosing to play with the dog sniffing around their table. Santana cocks an eyebrow at him, challengingly.

“Yeah? And who’s that?”

Swallowing, Kurt lifts his eyes from his fidgeting hands on the table to give her a look. “Sam,” he answers, steadily, tracing the rim of his cup with his fingertip. “I’m dating Sam.”

Santana’s mouth hangs open in surprise, then she slaps her hand down on the table, shaking all three of their drinks and making Kurt jump. “Oh my god. Oh my _god_.” She shakes her head, points a finger in Kurt’s face. “For the record, I totally knew he was into dick. He never even touched my boobs. Even you touched my boobs.”

Kurt frowns at her. “I was trying to stop you from putting them in my face.”

Brittany frowns at him. “Why?”

Apparently, Santana isn’t listening to either of them. She sits back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, deep in thought. After a moment or two, she nods to herself. “Alright. You and the Oral Vacuum could actually be cute together, and he isn’t completely lame, so.” She waves a lazy hand at him. “You’ve got our blessing, right Britt?”

Grinning, Brittany nods along. 

“That’s, uh,” Kurt says, quietly. He stares down at his drink, feeling another blush creeping across his face. “Thank you.”

“Oh man, look how red you are,” Santana exclaims, barking out a laugh. “You’ve hit that, haven’t you? Hummel, you dog. Do you guys meet up in the steamy Hummel-Hudson kitchen for some midnight fun? I bet he cries after. From what I can tell from his bulge, his dick is pretty impressive, but you just know he’s a crier.”

Kurt mashes his straw into his smoothie, wishing Santana had never decided they were friends.

-

When he gets home, he has four missed calls from Sam on his phone, but before he can answer any of them Finn lumbers into his room, wearing his frown of brotherly concern.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says, arms crossed. 

Kurt can’t take him seriously in his Mario T-shirt, but he’s still mildly worried, anyway. “Tell you what?” he asks, slowly, even though he has a feeling he already knows - he glances at his phone and there’s a message from Sam that says, _can we tell ppl_ , another following that says, _is that bad_ , and a last one that just states, definitively, _ok i told finn im sorr y._

Finn drops down on his bed, mouth agape, looking surprised and confused. “You’re dating _Sam_?”

“Don’t tell dad,” slips out Kurt’s mouth before he’s even fully registered it. He can’t handle keeping a lie like this up at home, and he knows his dad had enough problems letting Blaine sit next to him at the dinner table. Even though he likes Sam enough, he’d go from being the nice kid who needs a place to stay to the hormonal, teenage boyfriend that sleeps one room away from his son.

Finn frowns and shakes his head. “No, no, of course not, if you guys don’t want him to know, I get it.” He turns to Kurt, eyes wide and questioning. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

It manages to guilt Kurt, as strange as it is. He puts a hand on Finn’s back, smiling at him. “It just kind of - happened,” he explains, softly. “It’s a new development. Fetal, actually.”

Slowly, Finn nods his head in understanding. “Well, Sam’s a good guy. He’s always been nice to you and this is kind of freaking me out but if it had to be one of our friends, I’m glad you picked him.” Finn smiles, awkwardly. “You deserve a good guy.”

Kurt blinks, weirdly touched, then smiles back.

“You can tell me anything, you know,” Finn tells him, pulling Kurt briefly to his side before standing up and leaving.

When he’s gone Kurt lets out a long sigh that’s interrupted by his head popping back in through the door.

“You guys haven’t like, done stuff in here, have you?” he asks, looking pale.

Kurt hides his face in his hands and waves him out of the room. “Fetal stage, Finn.”

-

Sam comes back on Sunday night, greeting Kurt with a rush of hasty, unintelligible apologies and arm squeezing.

“It’s just, all year Finn and Rachel have been trying to set me up with all these girls I don’t know, and I really can’t take another one of them again. Ever." He holds Kurt by his arms, looking apologetically into his face. “I know it’s kind of weird but - they never laugh at my jokes and I just go home feeling awkward and crappy, so I told Finn that we...” His face screws up. “He was gonna find out anyway, right?”

Kurt pats one of his hands, pulling it away from his arm. “Yes,” he tells Sam, his voice placating. “It’s fine, so you don’t have to be all,” he sweeps a hand over him, making a face, “Like this about it.”

“Yeah.” Sam runs a hand through his hair, nodding, then he drops, limp, back onto the couch. “I felt bad because he’s your brother. He sounded kinda upset that you didn’t tell him.” Kurt glances down at him, and Sam is frowning, almost confused. “And then Santana started sending me all these weird websites, but we have that stuff blocked for Stevie and Stacey so I couldn’t see what any of it it was.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Kurt turns his head away to hide his blush. He could make an educated guess. “You probably didn’t want to know, anyway.”

“Definitely don’t,” Sam agrees.

It’s a little awkward for a moment, with Kurt willing the shamed blush off of his face in determined silence and Sam still worriedly picking at the threads of his jeans. 

A hand touches Kurt’s shoulder, and he turns to find Sam biting at his bottom lip.

“We’re okay, right?” he asks, frowning a little. “I mean, nothing’s going to change.”

Kurt shakes his head no, smiling and bumping their knees together - Sam kicks his leg up at it in a fake-reflex action and Kurt snorts, rolls his eyes a little. “Of course not.”

-

“Love songs!” Mr Schuester proclaims the next day as he walks into glee practice, proceeding to write and underline it across the white-board for the audibly-impaired.

Kurt shimmies down in his seat, watching Mr Schue look at each of their faces without reading any of the expressions there. He doesn’t look at Blaine, or at Sam beside him who remains unfazed enough to whisper, “Don’t we do enough of these already?”

Everyone else seems to be expressing the same sentiment to some degree, save for Rachel, who makes her way to the front of the class where she smoothes down her skirt and smiles her performer-moonlighting-as-a-serial-killer smile at them. “As a professional I always come prepared, Mr Schue,” she tells him, ushering him off to the side.

Kurt can’t deny it’s a very moving performance of At Last, and neither can the couples in the room, who begin shuffling closer, slinging arms over each other and pressing coy kisses to each others cheeks. It makes him feel suddenly lonely again, watching as Finn stares at Rachel with his dopey, adoring smile.

“Hey,” Sam says, softly, and then their hands are slipping together and being tugged over Sam’s lap to be held in both of his. They’re huge, Sam’s hands, the two of them completely enveloping Kurt’s own. Warm, too.

Sam must be just as lonely, Kurt thinks, and he’s never really thought about it before, but they’re practically in the same boat. They don’t want to look single, they don’t want to be sad over their exes anymore. He never thought he’d trust Sam enough for something like this, but he makes everything easy and lax. He just gives Kurt a big crooked grin and squeezes his hand tight.

They pull away to applaud, most of the club obligingly giving Rachel the standing ovation she says is necessary to have after an emotional number. Santana sits slumped in her seat, clapping unhurriedly while she looks around at everyone else, eyes stopping on Kurt.

“And what songs can we be expecting from you two love-birds?” she asks when the clapping has died down, flashing them a lewd grin.

The entire club turns to them, and Kurt suddenly, desperately wishes Sam’s arm wasn’t around his chair and that they’d never started this dumb little lie at all. 

He knows Blaine is watching with narrowed eyes and replies with an overly pleasant smile, “To be decided.”

Sam glances down at him, expression considering. “A Disney song would be cool. Or like, Stevie Wonder.”

Kurt is past the point of looking for logic in the things Sam says, simply smiling along with a shrug. He glances briefly at Blaine and finds him staring hard at the two of them. In fact, most of the club is regarding them with some confusion, Rachel and Mercedes especially.

A few chairs away, Santana points both her thumbs at herself and says, smirking, “With or Without You, U2.”

“No no _no_ ,” Artie interjects, putting a hand up in her direction. “I already have dibs.”

The attention shifts from them, thankfully. Sam suggests a bunch of ridiculous options - My Humps, Mr. Roboto, then just hums the tune from Knight Rider - and Kurt lets himself get distracted by them instead of the hurt way Rachel is looking at him and the book of love ballads Blaine is sifting through.

-

Mercedes is in love with Shane.

That’s what she tells Kurt when he asks if she’s upset after filling her in on he and Sam (because he knows he has to), her smile almost amused as shakes her head at him. They sit in the library together, books spread out around them in abundance to hide the fact he’s re-painting her nails.

“You're best at it,” she tells him, pinching at his cheek. He waves her hand off and tugs it back down in front of him, starting a second coat.

There should be something heavier between them, but it’s the same as it always has been with her - effortlessly simple. He gives her a cautious look and thinks of how long she was his home for. "You really aren’t mad?” 

“No,” she scoffs. “I’m happy where I’m at and if you and Sam are too, what’s the problem? It’s kind of weird, I’ll give you that, but we were a pretty short-lived relationship. And that’s even by New Directions’s standards.” She shrugs again, then her lips curl. “I see Blaine giving you both the eye lately, though.”

Instinctively, Kurt goes to say, that’s kind of the point. He quickly stops himself, shrugging it off and spending more time on her thumbnail than he needs to so he can think of something else to say.

-

Rachel shows up on Tuesday morning while they’re having breakfast. Both of his parents are still in bed after the long trip from DC the night before, thank god, and don’t see the binder she's clutching that’s labelled _‘Your First Gay Relationship: How To Treat Kurt Hummel Like a Prince’_ and is promptly handed to a sleepy Sam.

“Wow,” Sam yawns, pawing at one of his eyes, “This is like the longest book I’ve ever seen.”

Kurt immediately drags it across the table towards himself, red-faced and more horrified than he thinks he’s ever felt with her. “Rachel, no. This is so not okay on so many different, equally concerning levels.”

Barely looking at him, she pours him a mug of coffee, Sam and Finn’s following. She takes a seat at the dining table, folding her hands and still not looking his way. “Now, Sam, although Kurt doesn’t think me important enough to divulge important matters like the fact you’re currently _dating_ him -” 

Kurt groans into his hands.

She looks at him down her nose. “ _Excuse you._ As I was saying - I care for Kurt very deeply. I want him to be treated right.” She seems to soften on that note, lips pressing tightly together and eyes darting to the side for a moment. The whole table must know she’s thinking of Blaine right now. She clears her throat, pressing onwards. “I honestly do think you’re a good match for each other, but saying that, I know you’re new to dating boys.” She knocks her hand on the front of the binder, smiling like a saleswoman. “So my dads and I made this up for you last night, just to help.”

“You made that _last night_?” Finn asks her, awed. 

Rachel ignores him, staring steadfastly into Sam’s face. Sam scratches the back of his head and tugs the binder back towards him, Kurt reluctantly letting it go.

He flicks through the first few laminated pages, a small smile quirking his lips. Kurt feels embarrassed on behalf of everyone to have ever met Rachel just seeing half of them, but Sam doesn’t seem bothered, just says softly out of the corner of his mouth, “You really love him a lot.”

She straightens, slowly nodding in agreement. “I really do.”

Kurt looks at her and sighs at himself, reaching out to put his hand atop hers. So does he.

“I love him, too, you know,” Sam states, and Kurt thinks even his insides must be blushing because _wow_ , he was not expecting that.

Nobody else at the table was either, all of them staring at Sam, who reads another page with the necessary, painstaking concentration it always takes him before looking back up into Rachel’s face.

“Kurt’s one of my best friends. I’d never hurt him.”

Rachel looks appropriately touched. So does Finn, in a half-asleep way. Kurt feels a new, abrupt rush of fondness over him, giving Sam a soft smile when he glances over at him.

“That’s...” she starts. She smiles to herself, turning her hand up to hold the one Kurt has over it. “That’s what I needed to hear.”

Kurt feels the same way.

-

At lunch, Sam takes him into a music classroom to practice their duet.

“So, I’m thinking Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley,” Sam tells him conversationally, slinging his guitar over his shoulders and hopping up to sit on a desk. He takes a bite of his apple with an audible crunch of teeth.

Kurt nods with pretend thoughtfulness. “I’m thinking... no.”

Sam shoots him a wry smile and strums the guitar strings a little, testingly. Every time Kurt looks at him he remembers this morning, and all the lovely things Sam said and how they’ve stayed, branded into his mind all day. _I love him, too_. 

It’s been a while since a boy’s told him as much.

“What you said this morning,” Kurt begins, quietly, clearing his throat a little. He spreads his fingers out on the keys of the classroom piano, staring down at them. “That was really sweet of you, Sam.”

He doesn’t know if it’s weird to bring up or not, but few things seem to concern Sam much, anyway. 

Stopping his tentative strumming, Sam looks at him, smiling widely. “I was just being honest.” He shrugs. “We’ve always been honest with each other, right?”

Kurt perches carefully on the piano stool, his heart fluttering involuntarily. “Yeah, that’s... that’s true enough.”

Without warning, Sam’s hand reaches out, squeezing his knee for a moment. The crinkled corners of his smile and bright green in his eyes are doing dangerous, worrying things with Kurt’s heartbeat, and he does that regrettable thing he always does with boys he loves - looks and looks and starts to _want._

-

Blaine dedicates his love song to a boy who isn’t around to hear it, and on each side of Kurt, Sam and Rachel take his hands, squeeze them in their own.

They love him.

-

They practice their song most of the next night, holed up in Kurt’s room. Carole knocks after the first hour, giving them an enthusiastic thumbs up and seemingly finding nothing inappropriate about the song-choice - although knowing the glee club, Kurt’s willing to bet she’s heard worse.

He sits at the foot of his bed, more nervous than he’s ever felt around Sam. They sound nice together, which is a pleasant surprise, Sam’s deep voice complimenting his well, and the sound of it making him feel something warm in his chest.

“We sound good together,” Sam says after a while.

Kurt smiles, but he feels oddly guilty inside and it worsens at the sight of Sam’s earnest, pleased smile. “We do.”

Humming thoughtfully, Sam plucks at a string. “I wonder if we’d have won last year.”

Nothing comes to mind for that. Kurt frowns at him, questioningly. “Won what last year?” he presses. He thinks back, but all he can remember is that there wasn’t much he won last year, not so different from this one.

“You know,” Sam says, smiling a little, “The duet competition.”

Kurt recollects it, vaguely. He’d sang alone, and Sam had sung with Quinn instead - a girl, he remembers, it had to be a girl - and it had hurt then in a similar way to the way it makes him hurt now. He’d been so alone.

“I’d forgotten about that,” Kurt admits truthfully, and he almost wishes he still did.

Sam’s smile slips. He looks down at his guitar and nods in understanding. “It was a long time ago,” he says in a small voice.

Last year had been terrible for both of them, Kurt thinks suddenly.

“Let’s go again,” he urges, pushing at the hand Sam has hovering over the guitar strings. Sam’s lopsided smile returns, lazily charming, and Kurt watches it as they sing to each other, Sam too busy looking at his own working hands to notice the intentness of his gaze.

The song is over, and the quiet returns. Kurt is distracted, a little in love with the awkward shapes Sam’s mouth makes when he sings - and when he frowns, and his plush lips thin, purse.

“I feel like people forget about me a lot,” Sam says softly. 

Kurt stares at him for a moment, wondering how to respond to a problem he’s never had: his problem is that he stands out too much for people. He can't even say he feels left behind - Blaine moved on from him, but never stopped texting and cornering him after classes, almost obnoxiously determined to be around him still.

That’s the thing, Kurt realises. Sam’s last break-up happened and then - nothing. Nothing at all. He thinks back and it does seem like a depressingly recurring pattern of girls showing passing interest in him and then in someone else, again.

“Oh, Sam,” he breathes, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. Sam’s head is down, but what Kurt can see of his face is flushed, sad. “In a perfectly logical world, girls would be falling over themselves to date someone as nice and as good as you are. And I’m sorry for forgetting about last year, there’s just...” He huffs out a small sigh. “I’d rather forget a lot of it.”

Sam looks up at him quickly, becoming apologetic. “No, no, I get that. I know it really sucked for you, it just -”

“It sucked for both of us,” Kurt tells him like assurance, squeezing Sam’s arm with a small smile. “But don’t think you aren’t good enough for the girls you date, Sam.” He takes a hesitant pause before adding, truthfully, “You’re the sweetest boy I’ve ever met.”

Sam’s eyes widen a little and Kurt worries he’s crossed the straight guy line momentarily, but then he’s being yanked into an awkward, firm embrace over Sam’s guitar, and feels Sam laugh into his hair. It makes him flush, a bit.

“You too,” Sam says, lips brushing his temple. “I’d never thought about it but - yeah.”

-

They sing a duet version of _Be My Baby_ on Wednesday afternoon, and although Mr Schue finds it a strange choice and applauds for the successful, 'very sweet' outcome, looking mildly surprised at them, the rest of the club is more focused on the two of them being together.

Once the clapping has died down, Puck leans forward in his chair and asks them curiously, “So which one of you gives it?” 

“ _Dude_ ,” Sam says, mouth agape. 

Finn punches Puck in the arm. He rubs at it, frowning deeply. He looks back at the rest of the club, rolling his eyes. “You guys can all call it homophobic or brain-dead or whatever, but none of you can look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t the first question on your mind when you see two gay dudes.”

“That’s true,” Sugar concurs.

“Can you both not talk?” Kurt hisses, flushing. He grabs Sam’s hand and pulls him back to their seats at the back of the choir room, listening to the small silence that follows.

Puck leans onto the back legs of his chair towards Sugar. “Obviously it’s Hummel,” he stage-whispers.

-

Kurt avoids Sam afterwards, hastily untangling their fingers when they get to the car-park and spending most of the night in his room, or listening to his dad’s stories from DC. He feels like he should be the one apologizing, even though he knows it isn’t right. It’s stupid, really, but it weighs down on him heavily: the idea that he’s made it possible for Sam to be bullied for liking boys. To get hurt because of him.

It stays with him all night, a pestering worry that doesn’t leave until it’s forced him to the guest room door. He knocks tentatively, opening the door and peeking inside. “Sam?”

Sam is lying across his bed, reading something hidden by his knees. At the sight of Kurt he shoves it off of his lap onto the floor beside him, straightening. “Something up?” he asks, quickly. His cheeks are a little red.

Kurt blinks at him, still standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Is it okay if I -?”

“Yeah, totally. Of course.”

Smiling anxiously, Kurt shuts the door behind him and sets down gently at the foot of Sam’s bed. He hesitates, chewing his bottom lip before speaking. “I’m sorry about dragging you into this,” he says, softly.

Sam blinks at him. “Kurt, you really didn’t. If anything it’s the other way around.”

“But I could have just admitted that it was a joke.” Kurt draws his knees up to his chest and looks at the drawings Sam has stuck to the wall beside his bed that say Stacey and Stevie in wobbly letters, and thinks suddenly that dating Sam - really dating him - must be nice. He swallows. “I never even thought about the hassle you might get for people thinking you like guys.”

The bed creaks when Sam shifts closer and further down the bed until he meets Kurt, both their legs crossed under them, their knees touching. “That stuff really doesn’t matter to me,” Sam tells him, shrugging one shoulder. His brow furrows quickly, voice lower and more serious when he asks, “Are you still getting shit for being gay?”

Kurt shakes his head, looking down. “No, not really. People got tired of giving me hell. I just don’t want them to move on to my ‘boyfriend’ instead.” He inwardly cringes around the word, how stupid their little lie is.

“They didn’t do that with Blaine, did they?” 

That’s a good point, actually, Kurt thinks. They were fine with Blaine, who looked straight enough to be harmless to them. Of course Sam’s fine, too - it was just him that was the problem.

“It’s cute you’re all worked up,” Sam says, effectively snapping Kurt back to reality. His face heats up but Sam is just grinning at him. “Look, if this is about today you don’t have anything to feel bad about, really. _I_ felt bad letting them say all that stuff.” He pats Kurt on the arm, says, “I’ll get you some water and we’ll hang out in here, alright?”

Kurt smiles, nods. Sam’s thumb rubs along his arm before he goes and it makes him shiver a little, embarrassingly. 

He leans back on the bedspread, sighing a little and glancing around Sam’s room, which is the same as ever. More DVDs sit piled next to the television, more schoolbooks are across the small desk beside it. His eyes land on the floor beside the bed, where Sam knocked whatever he was reading down earlier at Kurt's arrival.

_'Your First Gay Relationship: How To Treat Kurt Hummel Like a Prince.'_

-

Kurt likes Sam's hands.

They're big like Blaine's were, but maybe not as neat. His fingers are crooked, the nails are bluntly cut down as far as they'll go, and the tips are rough with calluses from Sam-things like plucking coppery guitar strings and squeezing Xbox controllers and unhooking girls' bras because he's _straight._

Sweet, straight Sam Evans who holds his hand on the way to glee club just to feed some lie Kurt didn't think out. Just because he's an impossibly nice guy.

And that's fine. In glee, Sam will sit beside him with one of the band guy's guitars slung over his shoulders and play the Super Mario theme to him with this dorky big grin on his face, like he does every day. Sometimes they'll sit by the piano and Kurt will play along, and sometimes he gets too caught up in the happy crinkles of Sam's eyes to check Blaine's reaction. Then Mr Schuester will come in, and while he talks Sam will make weird faces, whisper in funny voices, and sometimes forget he's trying to make Kurt laugh and just glance at him occasionally with this almost anxious smile on his face.

Sam will make the same jokes as he does every day with just as much enthusiasm and whenever he's quiet, Kurt will look at his rough, crooked hands and think of how much warmer they feel held in his than Blaine's ever did.

-

Blaine stops him again. Luckily, this time he stops Sam, too.

He opens his mouth, pauses, shakes his head and tries again with a tight smile on his face. Kurt feels Sam’s fingertips move towards him, dragging down the back of his palm like a wordless signal. If he wants to leave, he will, Kurt thinks, but Blaine looks so awkward and small then and it isn’t in him just to walk away.

“I asked Sebastian,” he finally says, and at that Sam’s fingers reach out and wrap tightly around his. Blaine doesn’t notice, looking up almost eagerly into both of their faces. “About the four of us - hanging out.” 

‘Double date’ was Kurt’s chosen phrasing, but he’s too busy trying to contain his inner horror at where the end of this conversation could lead them to notice the difference. He stands, stricken, staring at Blaine with his limp hand clutched in Sam’s and suddenly remembering his past penchant for putting Kurt in awful, hostile situations with Sebastian, his least favourite member of the rodent family.

“So, how about Scandals on Friday night? I know you still have your ID from the last time -” Blaine stops here for the tiniest fraction of a second but Kurt catches it all the same, thinking tensely back to the night as well. For the first time in the conversation, Blaine makes eye-contact with Sam, forced smiles crossing both their faces. “Sebastian says you won’t need one to get in.”

“Oh,” Sam answers, dumbly. He turns to Kurt with a raised eyebrow. “And Scandals is...?”

Kurt clears his throat and squeezes convulsively at his hand. “A bar. A gay bar.”

For a moment Blaine looks between the two of them, thoughtfully. “I don’t want things to be strained with us,” he explains, eyes settling on Kurt. Sam’s fingers tighten slightly around his. “I know it sounds awkward but I want us to try.”

“Sam goes back to Kentucky on Friday nights,” Kurt replies, trying his best to sound apologetic. He’s relieved, so relieved to have an excuse to cling to, a barrier between himself and Blaine’s new love affair with the anti-christ.

But at his side, Sam shrugs. “I can wait ‘til Saturday.”

Kurt turns to him sharply in disbelief. Blaine doesn’t notice this, either.

He smiles at them both, making his way for the choir room door. “Thanks, guys. We’ll see you then.”

“I guess you will,” Kurt agrees with fake enthusiasm, but the room is empty besides he and Sam now. His phone buzzes in his pocket - probably Finn from the parking lot, wondering where they are with grammatical difficulty.

He pulls his hand out of Sam’s, frowning. “Explain that. Explain why you would willingly put either of us through a night of torture.”

Instinctively, he sees Sam’s hand reach out again, then gesture at the door Blaine just left through. “Because they think they’re hot shit!” he exclaims, eyebrows all the way up. Kurt cocks one at him, and Sam takes a long breath in. “If we don’t go, that Sebastian kid is gonna make it into some excuse you made up because you’re still into Blaine or something, and you know that. And Blaine would probably think it, too.”

Kurt relaxes, still frowning.

“We can just show them that’s not true. You’re over it, you’re over him, you’re...” Sam pauses then, staring at Kurt with suddenly pale eyes before scratching his neck and looking down at where his feet are scuffing across the floor. “Are you?”

It’s a big question, Kurt thinks. He’s avoided it, avoided anything about Blaine so actively the past few weeks for fear of how it might hurt. Instead, he’s been agonising little by little over Sam in small glances in class and long looks in the house. Sam is so simple, too; Blaine is still a messy, dangerous topic, a fresh wound trying to re-heal from prod after prod.

He swallows, holding his own hand and looking away for a moment. Then he opens his mouth, unsure of what will come out, and his phone starts ringing loudly in his pocket. 

Sam is staring at him still as he answers it, tells Finn they’ll be out in a second. Kurt looks away, feeling ashamed, and the only thing he says to Sam on their way out is, “I’ll have to pick your clothes. Make sure they’re gay enough to get you in,” smiling coyly and bumping their shoulders together.

Sam half-smiles back but refuses to meet his eyes.

-

Friday night.

They still haven’t spoke about the Blaine-shaped elephant in every room they occupy together, and Kurt intends to keep it that way.

Finn watches from the guest room bed as Kurt styles Sam’s hair, crunching on a bag of potato chips and wearing a confused expression.

“What makes gay bars so different from like...” His face screws up. “Bar-bars?”

Kurt slides Sam’s thick bangs back, fingers curled a little too tight. He thinks of tugging on his hair, pushing needy fingers through it, then his face burns hot and he tries to stop thinking at all. “Everyone is gay in them.”

“Or bi,” Sam adds. His eyes flick up to Kurt’s face. “Right?”

Kurt shrugs. “Yeah. Stop moving your head, now.”

“Sorry.”

Finn sits up, mouth a little open so Kurt can see the crushed remnants of his food when he glances his way. He swallows with effort. “Kurt, you can’t go out to a gay bar with your boyfriend in those pants. Dudes’ll try it with you.”

Kurt can see the quirk of Sam’s smile even with his head so downturned. “Doubtful,” he answers without looking away, giving Sam’s hair one more testing pat to see if it’s in place before letting him go to the mirror and see for himself.

Stumblingly, Sam walks over to it, and Kurt notices watching him that he’s not the only one in temptingly, stupidly tight pants tonight.

“Gross,” Finn says. “Don’t check each other out while I'm in the room. At least try to be subtle about it, man.”

Sam looks over his shoulder at them quizzically, and Kurt rolls his eyes and pretends to be very, very concerned with the lapel of his checkered blazer, knowing his cheeks are hopelessly bright red.

“We look good,” Sam counters, shrugging. He steps in front of Kurt again, avoiding his eyes and straightening his blazer out for him with his big, nice hands.

Kurt reaches up and takes them into his own reflexively and Sam looks up at him in surprise, wide-eyed.

Then he smiles, letting go of one and pulls Kurt another inch closer with the other. “You ready?” he says, brushing down Kurt’s shirt again.

Not trusting his voice, Kurt simply nods, unable not to smile back.

-

Scandals isn’t what Sam expects, he says. It’s as dark and gloomy as ever, the men in it mostly middle-aged asides from the two obvious teenagers at the bar, one of whom waves them over with a smile.

“You guys made it,” Blaine says enthusiastically when they’ve crossed over to meet them, and he’s slurring a little. He reaches out to clasp Kurt firmly on the arm, almost falling off of his stool in the process. After settling back in, Sebastian’s hand on him for balance, he grins at the two of them, says, “Hi. This is Sebastian.”

Sebastian snorts and barely looks at them, but holds the empty bottle of beer in front of Blaine up in front of them. “This is Blaine’s reaction to potentially awkward situations with exes.” Then he graces Kurt with a look, falsely friendly. “I guess you’ve both been busy enough post-relationship.”

The desire to cause Sebastian bodily harm returns in full-force. Unable to form any words that could pass for polite, Kurt says nothing and instead Sam interjects with an agreeing, “Yeah,” and slips a strong arm around Kurt’s waist.

Kurt takes a moment out of the awkwardness to smile a little to himself at the feel of it.

When he looks up, Sebastian is still smiling at him, something he knows is forced for Blaine’s sake alone. “He’s totally out of it,” he comments, tilting his head at Blaine who has his head thrown back for another drink of beer. “If you guys want to cut and run, be my guest.”

Something glints in his eyes. A challenge.

“I’m gonna grab a beer,” Sam announces, smiling back just as big at Sebastian. He presses his lips to Kurt’s cheek for a brief moment before pulling them over to the free stools beside Blaine, and Kurt follows him, dazedly, his heart doing something funny and embarrassing in his chest.

-

Sam is a bad dancer. Kurt already knows as much, but it still surprises him just _how_ bad, sometimes. Like tonight.

He allows Sam to forcibly pull him onto the floor after a bathroom trip and having Blaine’s drunk hands linger too long on him again, then Sam starts doing some form of crumping where he looks possessed by an evil spirit and not just half a beer.

“If you’re trying to diffuse the tension, you’re succeeding,” Kurt yells over the music, laughing.

Sam pretends to be confused. He stops what he’s doing, stepping further into Kurt’s personal space with his broad, dorky grin. “I’m really bad at this,” he says into Kurt’s ear.

Kurt doesn’t even care. He just likes the feel of having Sam so close, the warmth of his breath on his already burned-up skin. He touches his own lips against the side of Sam’s face and puts his palms on his chest, cautiously light. “It’s okay.” 

That big smile is flashed at him again. Sam pulls away just to show him it, then stands, half-dancing with Kurt for ten minutes while he tells him about the bad-dance-off he and Finn once had when the house was empty.

By the time they go back to the bar, Blaine has gone off to the bathroom, another empty bottle in front of his chair, and the cold, familiar smirk has returned to Sebastian’s face when he looks at the two of them.

"I was _thrilled_ when I heard you'd be bringing the Kentucky Fried Stripper tonight," he tells Kurt through his mean, hard smile. 

Sam tenses up at his side and Kurt reaches for his hand, tangling their fingers together and firmly rubbing his thumb across Sam's popped knuckles. His own jaw clenches and Sebastian looks at them both for a moment, clearly pleased with himself. He takes a quick mouthful of beer before setting it down on the bar and leans in close to Kurt, the alcohol strong on his breath and remaining, ugly jealousy over Blaine clear in his eyes.

"It must be costing your little family a fortune for you to date him." It has the same fake pleasantness of everything he says, but there’s the slightest quirk of a sneer on his mouth. He faces Sam and gives him a considering look, an eyebrow cocked up, and Kurt’s teeth grind together so hard he wonders if they can hear it. "Is it an hourly rate thing? Or are you being the best gay you can be and trying to re-enact the plot of Pretty Woman with someone of equal mouth-size as Julia Roberts?"

Sam squeezes painfully tight around his hand and Kurt knows without it there he'd be making a fist, and Sebastian would be lying on the floor with the imprints of his knuckles on his face, his mouth finally shut. A part of him is fuming, hot and trembling with anger and urging himself to let go, to just let Sam hit him.

Sebastian pretends he doesn't notice the tension in both of them. His smile widens, cruel and thin across his face. "And those awkwardly attempted body-rolls must be extra. Even you'd have to ask yourself, is he really even _worth_ -"

There's a sickening sound of bones colliding, cracking, and then a following throbbing ache in Kurt's right hand and throbbing rage coursing all through him. Blood starts trickling out of Sebastian's nose, first in tiny trails then in sudden, thick spurts. 

Because Kurt just punched him in the face. Hard.

"What the _fuck_ ," Sebastian hisses, voice nasally and clogged. Even with his head tilted back, Kurt can see his glare and the sheer amount of blood that's gushing from his nose; he can't even begin to feel guilty for it. He’s still mad, still has something wound up inside of him, rattling against his ribcage, desperate and furious to get out.

He steps forward, keeping Sam's limp hand tight in his own, and jabs Sebastian's chest with his finger, enjoying the way it makes him flinch, some blood spattering against his preppy shirt. 

"You do _not_ talk about him like that," Kurt tells him, lowly. He pauses, swallowing in an attempt to get rid of some of the adrenaline furiously coursing through him. Sebastian is just staring at him over the hand clutching his nose, silently. "Stay away from us both."

Turning to face Sam, he breathes out a soft, “Let’s go,” and grabs his jacket, putting money down on the bar and leaving before any of the guys working there coming steadily closer to them can’t force him to, Sam’s hand still clutched firmly in his own.

-

Sam is quiet on their walk back to the car. Kurt’s strangely nervous to look at him and gauge his reaction - he has no idea what to expect, really.

They stand by Kurt’s Navigator, hands sticking together with sweat at this point, something that should make him pull his away, mildly grossed out, but instead makes his heart flutter a bit, enough to stall getting his keys out of his pocket to hold on a big longer. He holds them in his hand, giving them a long look. The silence stretches on and Kurt just can’t bear imagining what Sam might be feeling right now.

“Don’t listen to him,” he urges, voice pleading. He turns to Sam, finding his green eyes fixed between them on their locked hands. They flick up to his own and something about his hunched posture and red cheeks makes Kurt want to go back inside and hit Sebastian again, just for good measure. Kurt squeezes Sam’s hand and says as firmly as he can, “Don’t let what some know-nothing asshole says get you down, Sam. Please.”

Sam blinks at him, eyebrows pushing to meet each other. His mouth parts open, but instead of talking he pulls Kurt closer by the hand, winds his long fingers into his hair and kisses him hard and deep, his other hand fisting Kurt’s blazer and tugging them further together.

_Finally._

Kurt lets out a shaky breath against him in surprise. Sam is pressing small, firm kisses across his lips, tugging gently at the bottom one with sharp teeth until they part. He makes a soft noise into Kurt’s mouth, and then all the adrenaline Kurt tried to abandon back in Scandals is back in full force, making his arms wrap around Sam’s broad shoulders and push him back against the car to lick deeper into his mouth, to press so tightly against him he can feel the speeding beat of Sam's heart matching his own.

“What you did in there, that was -” Sam huffs against the corner of his mouth, breathlessly, then he presses another quick kiss there before finishing, “ _Awesome._ " 

He’s looking at Kurt’s face with bright eyes and sliding a warm hand through his his hair, trying to regain his breath. Kurt looks back, red-faced and just as breathless, trying to memorize the feel of Sam against him like this with no spaces between the two of them and with the bitter, alcoholic aftertaste of Sam on his tongue.

Kurt surges up again, grabbing Sam’s face in his hands and kissing him once more, thinking suddenly of the look on Sam’s face at Sebastian’s words, the way he’d seemed to visibly ache inside at the sound of them. “Don’t listen to him,” Kurt instructs him again, the words muffled but sharp. He drags a thumb across Sam's cheek. “You are so _good_ , Sam.”

At that, Sam stares at him intently, almost searchingly for a long moment, and then he wraps Kurt up in his arms and holds him close for a while, head buried into his neck so Kurt can ticklingly feel it when he breathes him in, when Sam's lips brush his skin. They stand there wrapped up in each other until Kurt shakily, reluctantly tells him that they should be heading home, now.

-

The next morning, Sam is gone and his parents are back again.

Kurt gets up to greet them (and nervously knock once on the guest room door) and stays holed up in his room for a few hours, not thinking about kissing Sam outside of Scandals and pulling over on the way from Scandals to kiss him again on the side of the road, climbing into the passenger’s seat and saying his name, over and over.

God, he’s stupid. A perfectly good friendship, wasted. It isn’t all his fault, he knows, but he feels so guilty, so embarrassed, so insanely stupid anyway, and to top it all off his hand still hurts.

And he feels that way until midday, when Carole knocks curiously at his door and comes in, slowly, placing herself on the chair of his vanity table and giving him Finn’s anxious smile. She’s holding something in her arms, something big and obscured by the ugly pattern of her dress.

“Kurt,” she says, “Sweetie. Why is this in Sam’s room?”

She holds it out to him. Rachel’s binder.

Kurt lunges to take it out of her hands, quickly, his face reddening. “I, uh.” He holds it, hands a little shaky, and shrugs like it’s nothing. A three-hundred page instruction manual on winning his heart in Sam’s room - nothing. He knows Sam looks at it from time to time, probably getting some laughs out of Rachel’s incessant craziness. 

“It’s a joke,” he decides, slowly meeting her eyes. 

She presses her lips together, nodding in a motherly way where she pretends to be convinced for a split second. “Then why’s half of it highlighted, honey?”

Blinking, he looks down at the binder in his hands, paging through it with fumbling hands and finding that yes, Sam’s tacky bright yellow and orange permanent highlighters have made streaky waves over most of Rachel’s exclamation-point ridden advice, the same ones he makes over everything he reads so it’s easier and less jumbled up in his head, he says.

One bullet-point has been circled, underlined, pointed to by a dozen or so arrows.

_• Make him feel loved!_

Kurt spreads his hand out across it, a smile growing across his face and an excited warmth all through him. 

Carole clears her throat, and when he jerks to look up at her, she’s just smiling at him, shrugging in a ‘what can you do?’ way. “I understand if you don’t want your dad to know, and I’ll respect that, but house rules still stand.” She leans over and kisses his warm, embarrassed cheek. “No funny business, alright?”

His face dunks immediately into the nearest pillow, burning red, and she laughs on her way out, leaving the binder still lying open on his lap.

-

He puts it back under Sam’s bed later on, then pulls it out again and flicks through it one more time feeling ridiculously smiley. His phone buzzes in his pocket three times before he rolls his eyes and closes it over, putting it away for a final time.

Sam is texting him.

_i had 2 go at 7am_

_thn the babies kept me busy_

_i wanted to say bye_

Kurt reads them over a few times, then falls back onto the guest bed, _Sam’s_ bed, feeling the good kind of stupid. The happy kind.

_Don’t worry about it, I know you did. I’ll see you tomorrow._

A long moment follows before his phone buzzes again in his hand. 

_i cant stop thnking of u punching sebastian i rlly cant_

All Kurt’s been thinking about is biting down on Sam’s soft bottom lip and their bodies pressed together against the car, inside the car. But this is close enough, he thinks, and when he remembers back to the way Sebastian made him feel, the way Sam had looked, he can’t stop slow-motion replaying the moment in his mind, either.

-

Dinner on Wednesday night is awkward. Sam shows up just as they’re sitting down to eat, saying his hellos and quietly taking his seat directly opposite Kurt.

They smile at each other, and Kurt can literally feel Finn and his mom’s eyes on the two of them. Thankfully his dad is too distracted with the food. He’s eating it fast enough for Kurt to worry.

“Haven’t had a home-cooked meal in ages,” Burt tells the table, shaking his head. He puts a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Let alone a family dinner.”

Kurt sees the way Sam ducks his head a little at that with a little smile evident on his face.

Burt looks between the three of them, suddenly serious. “You boys are holding up okay with us gone, aren’t you? We’re heading back out on Thursday, that okay?”

“Fine,” Kurt answers before anyone can pay attention to the pointed look Finn gives he and Sam. “We can take care of ourselves.”

His dad smiles at him knowingly. Carole is smiling at him, too, the only difference is she looks like she’s about to burst out laughing.

Afterwards, Kurt insists on cleaning the kitchen. His parents are constantly exhausted now, and since clearly Finn doesn’t notice, Kurt tries to let them have it easy around the house. It helps to have Sam around, shuffling in beside him at the sink, scraping his plate alongside Kurt’s into the garbage disposal.

Kurt bites his lip to keep from smiling and Sam leans in close, murmurs, “Hey,” out of his big, ridiculous grin.

It’s too hard to fight it. Kurt lets his mouth curve upwards, bumping his shoulder off of Sam’s playfully. The firmness of Sam’s body comes back to him in heavy flashes, phantom-touches. His skin is electrified by the memories of it. “Hi.”

Sam looks over his shoulder then drops the plate in his hands on the counter. He opens his mouth, staring right into Kurt’s face, then swallows, looking into the sink. “Remember that time you punched Sebastian in the face?”

Mild disappointment settles in Kurt’s chest. He gives Sam a grin, stacks the cleared plates on top of each other and turns away to face the dishwasher where he lets the expression fade. “Hopefully I’ll never forget it.” 

This isn’t what he wants to talk about. This isn’t how seeing Sam again was supposed to go.

“Me neither,” Sam agrees. “It was the best thing I’ve ever seen outside of a cinema. There should’ve been a little box that came up next to you saying ‘pow.’”

Kurt smiles at him, vaguely, feeling his heart drop in his chest. They finish the kitchen together, talking about the same things they did last week, and Kurt aches the entire time much worse than he did for Blaine.

-

It continues like that the rest of the week, in school and at home. Sam doesn’t want to remember so Kurt lets it go. He tries to. He really wishes that he wanted to, even a little, but the problem is Sam is still so sweet, his hands still so warm, and Kurt admittedly likes him _far_ too much.

He should have known it was going to be a mess.

It takes until Wednesday for Blaine to talk to him again, stopping him by the notice-board to apologize profusely for being drunk, for whatever Sebastian said, and Kurt looks at him when he’s finished and wonders whether he wants an apology back, because if he does he’s completely out of luck.

“Sam’s the one who deserves an apology,” he says. His jaw tenses, and he’s angry thinking back to what Sebastian said despite himself. It’s no use with people like him.

Blaine stares at him looking almost petrified, then ducks his head embarrassedly. He won’t look at Kurt while he talks. “I gave him one already. It was really, really inappropriate of me, Kurt, I’m sorry. You’re right, we do need time apart for all this to set in better.”

Confused, Kurt crosses his arms, head tilting to touch the wall he’s leaning against. “What are you talking about?”

They look at each other for a moment. Blaine wraps himself in his own arms, eyes darting from Kurt’s.

“I couldn’t stop touching you. Even after you went to the bathroom and Sam told me to, when you came back I did it again. I’m just used to it, I guess...” He bites his lips, holding himself, then gazes up into Kurt’s face for forgiveness. “I’m sorry, to both of you. I really wish that night had gone differently.”

Kurt tells him it’s okay. He kind of does, too.

-

Sam holds his hand in glee practice until Kurt pulls it away.

He doesn’t know why they’re still doing it. He doesn’t care how pathetic the truth would look anymore. He doesn’t want Sam to give him the look he does afterwards, something brief but visibly hurt that Kurt’s mind turns into a thousand things he knows it isn’t.

-

There’s a party at Mike’s house on Thursday night to celebrate the three day weekend.

Finn drags Kurt into his room to pick an outfit for ‘getting some’, and Kurt is thankful to have an excuse to avoid Sam. It’s becoming a habit, spending more time in his bedroom than in the living room with the two of them and turning Sam down whenever he shows up at his bedroom door with some crappy action movie they can rip apart together, saying he has to study.

“You okay?” Finn asks, clumsily pulling on the shirt Kurt picked out for him. His head pops out of the neck, looking concerned.

Kurt hums and picks up one of his four ugly belts, each more hideous than the last. He offers it out without considering how it will look on, not that Finn knows if it’s good or bad anyway. “It’s been a long week.”

A hand weighs down his shoulder. Finn is giving him a serious look.

“Sorry if I was weird about you and Sam to begin with,” he says, which isn’t the best conversation starter for Kurt right now. “But I like you guys together, and if something’s wrong between you guys right now or whatever, it’ll work out. Really.”

Even if they aren’t actually dating, the sentiment is touching enough. Kurt reaches up and pats Finn’s hand, giving him the small smile of thanks that always makes him light up, pleased with his brotherly actions.

He leaves Finn, trusting him to put on the jeans he chose without much difficulty, and slips quickly back into his own room to regard himself in the mirror. He’s dressed well, as always, slim-fitting clothes, black boots, perfectly styled hair. He can see the same aura of sadness around his reflection like he could months ago after being dumped by Blaine.

It manages to feel a little worse this time around. He sighs at himself, turning away again, and hears his door creak open an inch.

“Kurt?”

Knowing Sam can’t see him, he squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a long breath before facing him with an inquisitive, forced smile.

Sam shifts from foot to foot in his doorway, smiling nervously. He takes another step in and says, “Could you do my hair again?” Then he looks around at Kurt’s room, stopping on Kurt himself. “I wasn’t born with your skills.”

“Sure,” he agrees with a nod, still unable to tell Sam no. God, he has a problem. At some point habitual bouts of self-pity just become acts of pure masochism. He tries to smile, waving Sam over to him. “Because my heart is just breaking for you.”

Sam grins, walking over to him. He stands with his hands dug into his pockets, facing the floor, and lets Kurt run trembling fingers through his hair coated in wax. His hands are too light, too gentle, but he doesn’t want to feel any closer to Sam than this. It’s too much already.

“There.” His voice is soft, sounding frail in a way he doesn’t think he’d be able to hide. He puts his arms around himself and wishes Sam had kissed him when he came home again.

Sam looks up, slowly, a pained look crossing his face. His bottom lip is worried between his teeth, and Kurt knows how it feels to bite, knows how it tastes, feels. 

“Kurt,” Sam breathes.

In reply, Kurt just shakes his head without looking away from his dresser.

“Guys,” Finn yells from downstairs, “Time to get a move on.”

-

Kurt is their designated driver, surprising no-one.

It’s a regular New Directions party by the time they get there, the majority of them already drunk and giving Kurt terrible second-hand embarrassment, and the others in a game of hide-and-seek around the Chang’s huge house. Mike grins at them all when they come in, pressing a beer into Kurt’s hands that he turns and gives to Sam instead, not meeting his eyes.

He sits on the quietest couch, with self-proclaimed teetotal Rachel who pulls him in excitedly after giving Finn a quick kiss on the cheek.

“You’re driving, right?” Rachel asks, squeezing both his hands in her vice-grip. At his nod, she lets out a relieved sigh and relaxes. “Oh, good. Being the only sober one of the group isn’t as rewarding as you might think.”

“Mmm,” Kurt replies. He doubts he’ll have much more to offer her, tonight, but she nestles into his side and starts talking animatedly about New York parties and putting your pinky out when you take a drink and all this other random stuff Kurt doesn’t absorb at all.

He sits there, lifeless, letting Santana throw peanuts at the two of them until Rachel storms off to the bathroom, affronted.

“What’s eating you?” Santana asks, kicking her legs up on the expensive looking coffee table. “Minus that non-stop ramble of bullshit Berry just gave you.”

The room is empty except for them. Kurt lifts his head out of his hands and looks at her. Why not just tell someone, he thinks. 

“I like Sam. Too much.”

She stares at him hard for a moment, absorbing it, then continues staring after he’s turned away, looking at his car through the window. 

At the other side of the room, he hears her sigh and place her drink down. “It gets easier, you know. I know it sounds super gay, and I won’t hesitate to cut you deep if you tell anyone I’m saying it, but you need to be honest for a relationship to work. I know how scary saying it to someone is - _believe_ me - but if that’s how you feel.” She shrugs, leaning back again. “You gotta tell him.”

Kurt sighs. It isn’t that easy. None of it is really honest anymore, he thinks. They’ve lost that, too.

“Look,” Santana says, clicking her fingers at him until he looks at her again, “Just - think about it, okay?”

-

Kurt is pouring himself his fourth glass of water in the kitchen when he sees Sam again.

“I got drunk,” Sam tells him, thickly, closing the kitchen door behind him. He takes a tipsy step closer. “I got sad so I got drunk.”

Raising his glass, Kurt concurs, “You did.”

With his face flushed and clothes a little wrecked, Sam looks painfully good. Kurt looks away, holding onto the countertop in his tight hands to keep steady. He can still hear Sam getting closer, one shaky step after the other.

Then Sam is nosing at the back of his neck, his hands clasping his shoulders from behind. Kurt tenses, ready to turn and push him away, tell him he’s drunk and that they can’t make anymore stupid mistakes together like this.

“Do you love Blaine?” Sam mutters, breath hot against his skin. He nuzzles in, hands sliding lower down Kurt’s back and making him shudder. “Is the only reason we’re doing this thing because you still love him and you want him to...” Sam swallows, audibly. “You want him to want you, again?”

There’s a ringing in Kurt’s ears. His mouth drops open slightly, and he before he can finish saying, “Sam, no,” Sam is talking again, his voice low and familiarly fragile sounding.

“Because if he does, I swear Kurt, I swear he’s not gonna want you as much as me. He couldn’t.” Sam’s cheek rubs at the first jutting knob of his spine, and his skin is warm, the touch of it to his own making Kurt’s breath quiver in his chest. “I’ve never felt like this. I didn’t know it could feel like this,” he says, his voice breaking.

When Kurt turns to him, Sam’s eyes are red, face drawn into an expression of pain. He breathes out shakily and steps closer to Kurt, a hand coming up to push through his hair and the other just to rest, comfortingly warm, against his cheek. Kurt sighs and leans forward at the touch.

“Please don’t want him,” Sam says.

Kurt almost laughs it’s all so ridiculous. He presses his palms to Sam’s chest, crushing the material of his shirt into his hands, desperately. “I want you,” Kurt tells him, like it’s as completely obvious as it’s always been.

Sam’s eyes flutter shut. He backs Kurt against the counter and buries his head into his neck, breathing in deep. “You never talked about it,” he says, as though he’s reading Kurt’s own mind. Sam shakes his head, his wet lips dragging across Kurt’s collarbone. “Then you avoided me. You were trying to forget.”

“I thought you already had,” Kurt explains, keeping his voice soft and calm. He pulls Sam’s head back up with unsteady hands, bumps their foreheads together, stares into the green of his eyes. “Let’s fake-break-up.”

With a crooked nod, Sam says, “Okay.” He waits a second then gives Kurt a quick kiss on the side of his mouth, the one he’s been waiting for all week. “Be my boyfriend.”

Kurt kisses him again, just as chastely. “Tomorrow,” he says, rubbing his thumb across Sam’s jaw, “Ask me tomorrow when you won’t taste like beer.”

Sam blinks at him for a moment, confused, before letting out a loud, happy laugh. He squeezes Kurt against him and they feel so nice, pressed against each other. “I won’t even brush my teeth. It’ll be all Evans.”

-

It’s early Friday morning, and Sam is at his bedroom door with Rachel’s binder in his hands and a sleepy, contented smile on his face, already dressed to leave for Kentucky.

“You look good hungover,” Kurt lets him know, crossing his arms of his pyjama shirt. He’s smiling too big. Kurt knows if any of their friends were here they’d find it obnoxious, how happy they are.

Sam grins broader, says, “You look good not-hungover." He taps his fingertips on Rachel's binder then offers it out towards him. "I want to give you this."

For a moment Kurt stares silently at him. He reaches out and takes it into his arms, the sheer, insane weight of it dragging them both down.

Sam takes a deep breath. "I don't want instructions on how to date you," he says, sounding a little breathless, excited, "I want to learn it all on my own." 

One of his hands slips behind Kurt's head, and before he knows it he's being pulled into a long, soft kiss in his bedroom doorway, one that pulls a surprised but pleased sound from his throat and makes him stumble over his own feet a little in eagerness.

Sam pulls back, huffing, still grinning so big. 

"You brushed," Kurt points out, half of him thankful, the other half not even sure he would have cared otherwise.

Nodding, Sam huffs out a laugh. "I hope that shows you the lengths I'm willing to go to for this." There's a gentle smile on his face as he stands there, looking down at Kurt and pushing his bangs back from his forehead with slow, lazy fingers. "So, what do you say?"

Kurt puts the binder down on the floor and reaches up, winding his arms around Sam's neck. He nods, kisses the side of his face, feels kind of in love already. "What do you think?"

**Author's Note:**

> For [2x04](2x04.tumblr.com).


End file.
